East End Caring Extends as Far as Greece

Participation by East Enders in a planned trip to Lesbos, Greece, to assist in relief efforts for the thousands of refugees flowing through there from countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, continues to grow as a departure date just before Thanksgiving nears. 

Melissa Berman, a Montauk resident, mustered volunteers from this area several years ago to help western Long Islanders hard hit by Hurricane Sandy, an effort that morphed into a homegrown organization called East End Cares. After following the ongoing wars that have created a flow of refugees unprecedented in recent years, “you just wake up one day and know you have to do something else,” she said this week. Partnering with a nonprofit organization, DoYourPart.org, East End Cares created the Direct Relief Project and began planning a volunteer trip.

Denise Schoen, an attorney who has been a critical care emergency medical technician with the Sag Harbor Volunteer Ambulance Corps for a dozen years, learned about the situation in Lesbos through Facebook posts and photos by Doug Kuntz, an East Hampton photojournalist who has spent much of the fall working in Greece. She immediately thought about going there herself to help. “I knew about it as a world event, but I didn’t really understand until I saw his images,” she said this week. She had planned a family trip to Cancun for the Thanksgiving holiday, but when she read more in The Star about the Direct Relief Project she sat her family down to discuss changing their plans. 

“ ‘You should just go now,’ ” Ms. Schoen said her 16-year-old daughter said upon learning of the dire need for more medics on site in Greece.

Her younger daughter, age 12, husband, and mother, MaryAnn Sarris, who was treating the family to the trip, all gave her their unqualified support. “By the end of the weekend I had canceled everything and booked my flights.” 

Bob Miller, an East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad member who is also going on the trip, was at a dinner party when he answered a question from Eugene DePasquale about what he was doing for Thanksgiving. Mr. DePasquale, an East Hampton Town assessor who was trained as an E.M.T., decided to go, too.

On an evening earlier this week, Mr. DePasquale and Ms. Schoen packed a large collection of donated medical supplies into big red duffel bags. Donations came from virtually all of the local fire departments and ambulance corps, and from Shene Nursing Service in East Hampton, via Valon Shoshi. Using donations by community members to a GoFundMe page, which had reached $6,375 as of yesterday, Ms. Schoen purchased many lifesaving items. Mr. DePasquale is also raising money on a GoFundMe site. 

In addition, tax-deductible monetary donations can be made for the local group’s work in Greece at DoYourPart.org. 

Other local supporters have offered a custom training session for volunteers in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and set up collection points for baby slings and other goods that are being shipped overseas.

Before leaving Greece earlier this month, Mr. Kuntz, who will return to Lesbos in the coming days, arranged for the purchase through some of those donations of several portable toilets that will be stationed near the beach where many refugees arrive. Though hungry, he said, people were declining to eat as there were no sanitary facilities available nearby. 

Mr. Kuntz saw the need and was able to arrange for a solution. “It’s something that money can’t buy,” he said, “restoring their dignity.” 

Brian Lydon, another East End Cares participant who volunteers around the world, and James Kushner provided five EKG machines to take to Greece.

Mr. Kuntz was interviewed on TV last week by News12 with Mr. Miller and Emma Newbery, who is also headed to Greece with East End Cares. The complete clip of the News12 interview can be seen on the television station’s web-site. 

  Marcus Lovett, a Broadway and television actor and singer, has also gotten on board in a big way to help the volunteer effort, after a chance online meeting with Ms. Berman. He had put a message out on social media expressing a desire to help a good cause and through a friend on Facebook was connected with Ms. Berman. He has become an active supporter and fund-raiser for the group.

To do so, he said in a recent phone interview, he spent time learning about the political situations that have fostered the flight of so many refugees. The big picture is almost too wide-ranging for most people to take in, he said. “What I think is remarkable about East End Cares . . . [is] they have found a spot that is almost apolitical,” a specific goal to address the specific immediate needs of people arriving on the shores of Lesbos. 

“It motivated me,” said Mr. Lovett, “to see how I could make a difference in one fishing village.” 

Almost immediately after getting involved, he wrote on Facebook about the challenges faced by medics working on people getting off boats after the trip from Turkey, many of whom have hypothermia from being wet and cold, and need resuscitation. 

Kara Schiff, a Connecticut resident who was a longtime friend and emergency medical technician, saw his post and made the commitment to go to Greece to help. As she could not make the trip with the group leaving here this month, she went on her own several weeks ago, carrying life-saving equipment provided by the Montauk Fire Department and other donors. 

“I can’t tell you how much your support is improving our medical services here,” Michael-John Von Horsten, the volunteer doctor whose clinic received the supplies, responded in a message to those involved.

In the face of news reports about the refugee crisis, Mr. Lovett said, “people feel helpless. But I want to help them feel a little less helpless by informing them what East End Cares and the Direct Relief Project and Melissa are doing. I want to feel less helpless by giving them the details of the situation.” For instance, he said, when Ms. Schiff arrived with the equipment, a doctor receiving it, who had been doing the best he could with limited supplies, said “I haven’t seen half of this stuff here.” 

Mr. Lovett has continued to contact potential donors and explain to them how much help is needed for the refugees. On the day he spoke with The Star he had obtained a donation from a philanthropist of a core warmer, which can reverse hypothermia — a vital piece of equipment requested by doctors in Lesbos, where a daytime temperature of 64 is now dipping to 30 degrees at night, and many refugees are ending up in the water after boats founder. 

“There’s a use for wealth in this situation,” he said, “but there’s also a lack of wisdom on the ground. That’s where I feel we are vital.”

With luggage loaded with medical and other supplies, a few of the East Enders will pile into one of the Unique Limo company’s cars, being provided through Ms. Schoen’s participation in East End Barter, to meet the rest of the volunteer team, numbering a dozen, at the airport. While the situation they will face in Lesbos is somewhat uncertain, what is certain is that they will carry the good will of many East End residents with them.